Feeling Clint Eastwood's Disgust

American Sniper is not a pro-war movie.

Whatever Clint Eastwood's exact politics may be—kind of libertarian? sort of conservative?—his hit movie, American Sniper, waves no flags for America's involvement in the Iraq war. In a film inspired by the true story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, said to be the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history, Eastwood marshals deep feelings about the moral and physical destruction of war, and he flashes anger toward the higher-ups who guide young warriors to their doom. He doesn't flinch from showing us the full ugliness of combat—American forces violently invading an Iraqi home, a vicious jihadi taking a power drill to a helpless civilian—but this is in no way an old-school Hollywood war movie. Eastwood never exults in the brutal action, and throughout the film we can feel his disgust.

Over the course of four tours in Iraq, Kyle was credited with 160 confirmed enemy kills, and he was probably responsible for many more that were undocumented. The man had a terrible gift. Bradley Cooper, who acquired the film rights to Kyle's bestselling 2012 memoir early on, plays him here, bearded and bulked-up, in a performance of intense focus. Cooper has come a very long way from his breakthrough in Wedding Crashers 10 years ago. Here he portrays a difficult character, a man whose emotions are held tightly inside, by subtly projecting those feelings without parading them before us. This is a wonder to watch throughout.

We're introduced to Kyle on a rooftop in Fallujah, sighting his rifle on the street below, alert for targets. He sees an Iraqi woman stepping into the street with a boy who could be her son. She hands the boy a weapon she has brought out from beneath her chador as they both watch an American convoy that's making its way toward them through the rubble of the city. Kyle's duty is alarmingly clear, but his soul is torn.

To illustrate Kyle's divided nature, Eastwood fills in his backstory with compelling economy, flashing back to his Texas childhood. We see him out hunting with his father, dropping a deer with a difficult shot. We see the whole family in church, and later, at the family dinner table, we hear his father explaining his stern view of the world. There are three kinds of people, he says: sheep, who "don't believe evil exists"; wolves, the evil men who prey upon them; and sheepdogs, men with "the gift of aggression," a "rare breed that lives to confront the wolf." Kyle knows which sort of man his father wants him to be.

Appalled by the 1998 Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Kyle enlists in the Navy and trains to join the SEALs, the service's elite sea-air-and-land division. In a bar one night, talking to the woman who will soon become his wife, he tells her, "I'd lay down my life for my country. It's the greatest country on earth."

When Kyle deploys to Iraq for the first time, Eastwood shows us how he reconciles his deepest beliefs—his religious faith, his patriotism, his family values—with his duties as, essentially, a professional killer. He appears to have no interest in the political forces in which he's caught up, and this enables him to tightly narrow his focus. He wants only to protect his fellow fighters and to dispatch the evil enemies who seek to annihilate them. Nothing else matters. But his determination to maintain this difficult mental balance begins eating him up inside.

The movie is masterfully shot and edited. It's also unexpectedly intimate, especially in the scenes with Cooper and Sienna Miller, who have a rich chemistry. Miller plays Kyle's wife as a high-spirited woman who loves her husband and the kids they've begun accruing but is distraught as she watches him turning into a stranger, spooked and uncomfortable at home and repeatedly drawn back to the never-ending war. "You did your part," she tells him. "Let somebody else go….If you think this war isn't changing you, you're wrong." But Kyle keeps returning to Iraq, where he does legendary things (taking out one jihadi killer from more than a mile away) and awful things as well. He also has to listen to fatuous officers make statements like, "These wars are won and lost in the minds of our enemies," a line at which we can almost see Eastwood cringing in revulsion.

There surely was more to the real Chris Kyle than what we see here. (He was shot to death two years ago, ironically by a troubled veteran he'd been trying to help.) But Eastwood uses the key aspects of Kyle's life with determined purpose. He doesn't seek to arouse us with the slaughter amid which the celebrated sniper spent so many of his days—the massacred civilians, the dying SEALs choking on their own blood—but to make us think about it. It's not a pretty picture, but Eastwood has made a powerful film out of it.

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Not as funny as when Kyle got exposed for being a liar and lost the libel suit that Ventura filed against him.

I will agree that it was hilarious watching the right-wingers try to declare Jesse Ventura evil for trying to get compensation from Kyle’s estate. Apparently if someone libels you and then dies, you’re not supposed to try and prove that they were lying.

Possibly. I have stuff I have to do today, but if you want we could grab something to eat tomorrow. The Final Four is on, so we could go to a Sports Bar or something. Drop your email address in the chatroom and we’ll talk later today.

He tried to take the high road way before the suit was even filed. The Kyle’s responded by trying to pay him off. Kyle was a liar, and he profited from his lies at the expense of Ventura. He is absolutely right to continue to sue the estate until they are forced to correct Kyle’s statements and apoligize, which is what Ventura asked for in the first place. The money was not Ventura’s goal.

tried to pay him off. In other words, settle. Because no one has ever done that in the history of lawsuits. I’ll admit to having little sympathy for Ventura because of his own dickishness but making someone an offer is an admission of something, no? Ventura’s reputation has challenges that go beyond Chris Kyle.

If an offer of settlement is the same as an admission, then why wouldn’t they just apologize and move on? Because it isn’t the same. Kyle tried to maintain his many lies, and Ventura was forced to seek justice. This isn’t even controversial, everyone now admits that Kyle was full of shit a good percent of the time. Suing Kyle’s estate (worth millions) isn’t the same as suing some poor widow.

So should no one ever sue anybody since family members will lose value from the estate?

I think when you file a lawsuit as a vendetta for a public slight when you’re already a slimy piece of shit, the death of your adversary could reasonably be considered a settlement of the issue, and continuing to pursue the matter against his state is pretty petty. This is the modern day equivalent of pistol dueling over an honour feud, and Ventura pursuing it to the bitter end is the modern equivalent of forcing his opponent’s second to step in and take a bullet in his absence.

TV shows use real babies. This was a major motion picture. The fact that the producers chose to use a clearly fake baby tells me they were targeting a non-discerning audience.

The war machine rolls on because the federal reserve prints more notes and six figure income families like mine get screwed on taxes to pay for shit to which we are diametrically opposed. And because our government sucks and folks are still willing to sign up.

Ventura maintains a relationship with service folks, gets some business becauae of it, and gets some business due to the tough guy image. He had a obligation to sue and not settle.

Not being his manager, I don’t have any idea what his business rolodex looks like. But I think I can say confidently than anybody still doing business with Ventura in 2012 couldn’t possibly have cared about that story. “Hey, I’ve been transacting business with a former flamboyant WWF wrestler and 9/11 truther whose career high point was playing second fiddle to Arnold Schwarzenegger in an alien movie, but THIS — now I have to rethink everything!” Come on. This had jack shit to do with Ventura’s business reputation, it was a dick measuring contest.

If you don’t like Ventura, that’s fine but Kyle lied to profit and the lies had the strong potential to cause significant harm to Ventura’s private and public life.

Considering Ventura has spent the last decade making a career out of falsely smearing both public figures and private individuals as murderers and liars (pick up a copy of his latest book “They Killed Our President”, a handy guide to the people ostensibly responsible for murdering John F Kennedy and then covering it up), my heart bleeds for him. It must be horrible to see unkind, demonstrably false things printed about yourself by an egomaniac with a big mouth.

Lol. So Ventura’s public service vindicates his career filled with selling lies and deceit? But you experienced schadenfreude at Kyle’s big mouth being exposed as a critical flaw? I guess everybody needs a hero. Even the Nazis had them, after all.

Feel fortunate that nobody has ever libeled you in a way that damaged your ability to earn money.

I do. Ventura should as well. And he should feel even more fortunate that he managed to squeeze a couple million extra bucks and another 15 minutes in the lime light out of a lawsuit that, when published in book form, may well take the title “Tu Quoque: The Jesse Ventura Story”.

You seemed to want to list his professional achievements. You made two glaring omissons.

I enjoy it when lying pieces of shit like Chris Kyle that profit from said lies while simultaneously damaging another get called out on it and there is a correction. It seems many including some on here hero worship Kyle. In spite of all his bullshit. As you said, Nazis had their heros too.

Again, a court ruled differently than your opinion regarding whether Ventura was libeled by Kyle (and the publisher). Feel free to start a blog that includes “what really went down.”. Regardless of whether any of your opinion about Ventura’s current activities are true, the issue was whether Kyle lied about what happened. And he did.

If Ventura truely is lying about others then they should take the same approach he did with the liar Kyle.

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Coming from someone who has excused a couple hundred million murders based on his political ideology, your opinion on the relative morality of any two given things is worth pretty much less than larvae on a steaming pile of shit.

So, if at 19 I decide to do what I perceive at that embryonic stage to be patriotic, I must forever relinquish my government-griping rights? That makes sense. I would have thought that maybe the whole war experience might be very enlightening for some people and give them much more insight why government sucks.

If you’re old enough to enlist and willfully ignorant of what being in the military truly means (terrorizing foreign nations that pose no threat, blindly obeying the will of corrupt politicians and pissing on the Constitution, etc), then you’re probably too stupid to learn.

So, if at 19 I decide to do what I perceive at that embryonic stage to be patriotic, I must forever relinquish my government-griping rights? That makes sense. I would have thought that maybe the whole war experience might be very enlightening for some people and give them much more insight why government sucks.

To answer your question, no. What amazed me was the coworker of mine, career Navy, who was all for the Iraq war, then several years into it, said we shouldn’t have gone over there. How can someone be so flippantly “pro war” and then change his mind? The 19 year olds I almost see as victims. They should have an adult around to talk them out of it when they’re considering joining the military to go on the other side of the planet in order to “protect our freedom.”

It’s also true, that our soldiers overwhelmingly contributed more campaign cash to Ron Paul (more than all other candidates combined in the 2012 primaries) thus indicating they preferred his foreign policy. So you’re right, the “war experience might be [actually is] very enlightening” for many of the soldiers.

In a bar one night, talking to the woman who will soon become his wife, he tells her, “I’d lay down my life for my country. It’s the greatest country on earth.”

This is, unfortunately, the sentiment to which people will refer when labeling a movie “pro-war.” Suggesting that the US has redeeming characteristics or is perhaps unique in a world filled with paternalistic liberal democracies and autocratic theocracies is tantamount (to the leftist mentality) to denying that the US has any flaws at all. Suggesting that the country is worth dying for is worse, because soldiers are naive ingenuous exploited by the military-industrial complex to enrich GOP donors. Worst of all is the notion that the country might be worth killing for, because soldiers are genocidal murderers gunning down innocents in their homelands. Any war movie that doesn’t make its anti-war bonafides as obvious as a tractor-trailer barreling through the narrative might as well be the spiritual successor to Red Dawn.

It’s not what I meant. I’d like libertarians to actually oppose the state. On this website there’s a fixation– among other things– on the rooting for the decline of states who actually still have a safety net and people joining unions. Those last two things really aren’t concerns of libertarians that I care about, but fighting a decade long war against people who never attacked us. Yeah, kind of.

I really don’t get this hostility that I get for criticizing people who go to fight a war that was clearly illegitimate. I oppose half-trillion dollar defense budgets and think there hasn’t been a war worth fighting since 1945. You?

“It’s not what I meant. I’d like libertarians to actually oppose the state.”

A socialist shows his ignorance. Apparently socialists don’t think libertarians would actually like to shrink the state to the smallest size possible and still accomplish it’s goals of protecting our lives, our property, our liberty and our pursuit of happiness, rather than getting in our way. Heck, some libertarians would like to eliminate the state entirely (libertarian anarchists) and replace it with voluntary and private institutions.

And any self described socialist who wants people to “oppose the state” obviously doesn’t know what socialism is, because socialism is big government. Perhaps you should educate yourself about what socialism is. Reminds me of patriotic kids who go to war, before they learn they will be used for the benefit of politicians and those invested in the military industrial complex.

“Any war movie that doesn’t make its anti-war bonafides as obvious as a tractor-trailer barreling through the narrative might as well be the spiritual successor to Red Dawn.”

Pretty much.

The great sin of “American Sniper” was failing to adhere to the well-established “Green Zone“-canned-narrative, where the only point of the movie is to reinforce the one-dimensional POV that “BUSH LIED”, and therefore there is nothing else at all worth talking about even though we fought a decade long war in Iraq.

i.e., “if you’re not telling a story that centers entirely on the Political aspect, then it is unacceptable”

Talking about ‘real soldiers’ as though they were ‘real people’, and that – maybe, *just maybe – they WERENT all that concerned about whether or not Saddam had WMD’s or not? That, in fact, most really didn’t give a shit, and were not tearing their hair out like Matt Damon over the finer-details of the Casus Belli?

Blasphemy.

The ‘big picture’ aside; there’s also the ‘problem’ that Kyle – a person that most people in the media insist is the poster-boy of Redneck, Right Wing America – is actually treated like a thinking, feeling human being. The fact that the film humanizes a person who ‘bragged about shooting lots of ragheads’ is unforgivable. No matter how good it was as a *film*, it fails as political history, and it insults progressives by rejecting their small-minded stereotypes.

Kyle – a person that most people in the media insist is the poster-boy of Redneck, Right Wing America

and for argument’s sake, let’s say he is. How is that worse than some beta male incessantly glued to his iPhones while stroking a beard while waiting for the barrista at Stabucks to provide the day’s message on race?

It’s a shock to many that soldiers are actual people, most motivated to joint for good reason and few who are practically sociopaths, not unlike much of the rest of society. Progressives get insulted every time someone refuses to play their game of moral equivalency.

Oh, and I’m just waiting for the day when some punk blond headed hipster barista who has never ventured beyond the safety of his parents neighborhood on Frolicking Lamb Lane to lecture me about race. Something something something about Shuvs and Zuuls deep inside of a Slor…

Generation Kill does a pretty good job showing American soldiers are people rather than just pro- or anti-war stick figures. As the author liked to point out, a lot of Americans have this kind of noble image of the soldier as a warrior poet based on World War Two media, when in reality a lot of troops are between the ages of seventeen and thirty and act like it.

Oh look, the man who gives zero shits about the murderous tyrants of his favourite authoritarian regime is trying to lecture us on dead kids. It’s almost like your moral outrage is arbitrary rather than consistent and you’re completely full of shit.

Suggesting that the US has redeeming characteristics or is perhaps unique in a world filled with paternalistic liberal democracies and autocratic theocracies is tantamount (to the leftist mentality) to denying that the US has any flaws at all.

In the context of a biopic, that shouldn’t even be a consideration anyway. The filmmaker isn’t necessarily endorsing the subject’s viewpoint. He’s telling the subject’s story.

Eastwood, to me, is my vote for most significantly overrated director, but I’ll say– to my relief– that his movie is intelligent. The last time I saw him on tv he was losing an argument to an empty chair so I thought he might be going the way of the Heston.

While not taking a Daniel Ellsburg position on it, Gary Johnson was more open to treating Manning as a whistleblower than President Obama.

The Freedom Socialiat Party took the dtamce that Manning is a whostleblower (in part perhaps due to his position as LGBT). They ran a candidate in the 2012 presidential election. They had a pro Manning rally in San Fran (and other cities).

You could have voted for, Gary Johnson (former Governer of NM) the Libertarian. He wanted to bring our soldiers back home and leave the Middle East to it’s warring factions.

People there will never be free, until they learn they’ll never have freedom until they are first willing to give it to others. And Muslims don’t want others to be free, since their (most of them) religious beliefs are such that they want to tax/punish others who aren’t of their religion.

I love Eastwood’s films, especially “Absolute Power” and “Pale Rider”. But it’s not just “guts” that one needs to make a file about Watada, or say Matthew Hoh. It’s a lot of money, and who’s going to spend their money on a film that isn’t likely to get much of an audience and pay back those financing it? Not only that, the producer will become the enemy of a bunch of powerful people, and likely pay a big price when they sic the government on him. I agree with you, Kyle was a bit of a fool.

Perhaps it’ll happen when all the warmongers are discredited and out of power.

because Kyle was not a modern version of the guy in Born on the 4th of July, ergo, pro-war film. Because binary is the only way of thinking for too many people. And because politicizing everything has become the national sport. Sometimes, a movie is just a movie.

I agree with Loder, Eastwood was disgusted with the war. Kyle said that the war “isn’t what I expected.” Movies do make moral/political points. What do you think the point of “Absolute Power” was? One of my favorite Eastwood movies (star and director).

Just because a movie is set in ‘war’ doesn’t necessarily make it a ‘war film’.

I’d argue that both Kelly’s and Dirty Dozen are basically ‘Ensemble/Heist’ films

Kelly’s Heroes being 100% a ‘heist film’, and that Dirty Dozen is 70% heist-film, and 30% “Seven Samurai”-ensemble-suicide type thing. “Either face a death sentence, or work together in one redeeming act”

Neither are really ‘war movies’ in the “Longest Day”/All Quiet on the Western Front/Platoon-sense, where the conflict of the “war itself” is the core of the film. The fact that they shoot lots of Nazis is ultimately incidental. FUN! but not necessary to the story.

Dont try to fancy this shit up with junior-college vocabulary. Movie plots follow fairly few formula templates. Kelly’s Heroes is a “Bank Job”, heist-movie. End of story. The fact that the guards are Nazis and the Bank Robbers have tanks is all so much ‘set dressing’.

While technically a detective movie set during the Russo-Turkish War, Turkish Gambit is a personal favorite. The begining in the sunflowers and the storm of Pleven scenes are amazing. Both Kubrick offerings are top shelf.

The deer hunting scene in Deer Hunter was of a red stag and not a whitetail as would have been appropriate for Pennsylvania (plastic baby moment). That and the patronizing acting by Streep knocked it down a few levels for me.

You don’t understand. The Abrams takeover is like it being the mirror universe (and let’s not forget that in the first Abrams one, they disclose that they are, in fact, in a parallel timeline), so therefore, everything is opposite. Meaning it’ll be the odds that are good with Abrams.

It’s a totally watchable film, I don’t have any problem with it. I actually like the fifth one, which people stupidly automatically react to with “Shatner directed it, ha ha, it must be terrible”, when in fact it’s actually not bad at all. But then again I like the first one too. I saw it in the theater as a very young kid and the quiet eerie isolated space stuff was totally awesome to me.

All of the original series movies are watchable. The Motion Picture is WAAAY better than most people remember it.

The Final Frontier has a good story, but the plotting is very sloppy. Plus, ILM had committed to other movies for that year, so the Trek series had to use a second-rate effects shop.

Also, The Final Frontier was in production when there were a lot strikes in Hollywood. It has been rumored that the Teamsters union torched a number of trailers during the production of The Final Frontier because they were using non-union labor.

I would put First Contact above Undiscovered Country and Insurrection above The Motion Picture, but otherwise I agree. Regarding Final Frontier… it doesn’t suck because Shatner directed it – it sucks because the story is complete shit. That said, it does have some nice moments and I have no problem watching it when it’s on. Which cannot be said for Generations or Nemesis.

So as many of you know, starting on June 1 I’m going to eat for less than $5.00 a day as a social experiment to prove that anyone who thinks you can’t eat for the amount of money you get on food stamps is an idiot.

Well, I’ve been researching the topic and found this blog where someone ate on one dollar a day for a month and then claimed that the fact that they were hungry proves how hard it is to be poor.

Problem: If you’re on food stamps, you get 5 times as much money as this guy was spending. So the fact that he managed to eat on only one dollar a day and did so successfully (even if he was hungry over the course of that month) pretty much proves how easy it should be to get by using nothing but food stamps, right? I mean, if someone can survive on a dollar a day, then surely $5 a day should be relatively easy, provided you’re not a total dipshit who blows money on soda and candy.

Unfortunately it resonates with me. I remember living for months on bread and butter.

I remember passing by restaurants, in the summer. People were eating outside, and I was staring at their plates. Those juicy steaks…

At the time I considered grabbing a piece of meat with my hand and just running away with it.

I’m doing a lot better now. But still, capitalism, gotta love it.

Quite so. Clearly no one ever goes hungry in anti-Capitalist nations, like Cuba or Venezuela.

Also, he’s full of shit regarding bread and butter. Where was he living, Soviet Russia? If you’re anywhere near restaurants, there will be food pantries you can take advantage of, as well as churches that provide free meals periodically.

The problem with poverty in this country really stems from an inability among the poor to budget. They aren’t taught to budget by their parents and the schools don’t teach them.

I personally think that every low-income school in this country should be teaching the kids basic life skills like budgeting and balancing a checkbook because they don’t learn that at home and that’s one of the major factors involved in inter-generational poverty.

The Realtor ads conflating home-ownership with a variety of positive benefits involving everything from kids’ grades to healthiness makes a similar mistake by comparing populations predisposed to discipline and saving with the population in general.

Self-discipline and long time horizons precede wealth accumulation. Saving for the down-payment is indicative of the sort of person a homeowner is. Pretending we can plonk people with a propensity toward self-gratification into houses and wring social benefits from them is absurd. The same goes for raising minimum wages out of proportion to the skillset a worker offers (let alone the negative effects that has on employment).

the working poor have a clear idea on budgeting and making economical meals. The grifter poor, not so much. People being poor is not new; people being poor and demanding that someone else subsidize is, at least in historical terms. Anyone whose parents grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression understands what making do is like. Dipshits like the hungry blog guy have no clue.

Being “poor” is more a state of mind than a fiscal reality in the U.S.

I deal with self described “poor people” every day as part of my work. It’s just a self fulfilling prophecy for most of them and provides them an excuse not to change (as many have pointed out here) the things that keep them there while demanding that we provide them with everything they want for “free”. After all, they’re poor you know.

“Incidentally, the guy who wrote the ‘dollar a day’ blog did the shittiest job of planning that I’ve ever seen.”

Doesn’t that make it pretty realistic though? There’s this phenomenon called decision fatigue and it affects anyone who has to make a lot of decisions in a day. For example, it’s why you always want to schedule your court appearance or job interview in the morning. It’s also theorized why very poor people are worse at long term planning, because they have to make a lot of smaller decisions (do I want to buy a sandwich or laundry detergent) which leaves less mental energy for more important decisions. For the record, I agree with the point you’re trying to make and don’t really think any welfare should exist, much less be increased. I’m just saying that it isn’t a realistic simulation to plan your meals on a tiny budget when you’re not feeling the effects of it yet.

Dammit, I can’t find it online, but in one of W.F. Buckley’s anthologies that I read many years ago, he quoted an economist (I think, perhaps it was a nutritionist) and said that the country could position three ingredients (rice, beans, lard? — hell, I can’t remember!) at all the grocery stores FOR FREE. This would guarantee that no one in ‘merica would starve. And the cost to the gov’t would be miniscule compared to food stamps.

If anyone can verify (or disprove) my memory, I will be eternally grateful.

The amount of food stamps one gets is highly dependent on income and the number of children they have. I’m well acquainted (family, close friends) with people who actually have spent fairly long stretches on ~$3 a day in food stamps. It’s definitely not as pleasant or as easy as you seem to think. Have fun, but also bear in mind that spending a few weeks living below your means with the security that your situation is temporary and self-imposed is not exactly the same thing as actually being poor.

The amount of food stamps one gets is highly dependent on income and the number of children they have. I’m well acquainted (family, close friends) with people who actually have spent fairly long stretches on ~$3 a day in food stamps.

Furthermore, I seriously doubt the people you know who were on $3 a day in foodstamps were only buying food via foodstamps. Like you say, it’s predominantly related to income, so if someone has a higher income (but is still within the bounds of food stamp income levels) they won’t get as much money. However, that person would have more money through their personal income to spend on food.

You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I seriously doubt the only money the people you know spent on food were via the food stamp program, given that, as you say, it varies by income.

Well, I guess for the benefit of context, we’re talking about a couple of disabled people on SSI (supplemental security income, not SSDI – social security disability insurance, which is significantly more generous). Combined annual income around $13.5k. They actually did stay pretty consistently within the food stamp allotment, by necessity. I’d say an overage of 10-15% every other month, give or take. Those were the ones who had it pretty tough. Not missing meals, but definitely not eating the same quality of nutrition as before they were on government assistance. Breaks my heart. If I had the means, their situation would change immediately.

The other cases, less sympathetic. Single parents of multiple kids. In those cases, food stamps did indeed represent a much smaller portion of their monthly food budget. Probably a third or less, I’d guess.

I seriously doubt the only money the people you know spent on food were via the food stamp program

This is kind of why I think your $5 a day idea is unrealistic: when I mentioned I was on food stamps for about a month and I got way more than $5 a day, I had zero income or savings. I can’t recall exactly what I got but I think as a start you should up your daily limit to $10 and that would probably reflect reality more closely.

If you’re anywhere near restaurants, there will be food pantries you can take advantage of, as well as churches that provide free meals periodically.

Also, please don’t take advantage of those programs while you’re conducting your lifestyle experiment. Or at least make an equal dollar donation after your month is up. Unlike the government, those private charities really are resource-constrained and there are people who legitimately need that help.

This also isn’t a ‘lifestyle’ experiment, it’s a political experiment. The only reason I am doing this is because I got in an argument with someone who assured me that people in America are suffering because our evil capitalist society doesn’t give enough money in food stamps. So I looked up the average food stamp money per person, and decided to prove that, based on that average, you can eat well using only the allotted food stamp money and with no outside assistance.

So this isn’t me doing this for ‘fun’ it’s me doing this specifically to prove a political point regarding the United States Federal budget.

Okay dude, ffs, I didn’t see your original post on the subject. I wasn’t trying to imply anything. I know not everybody necessarily has a lot of experience with that kind of thing and might not realize how limited those kind of resources are. One of the… I guess you could call it “benefits”, of perspective coming from long lines of stupid, poor white trash and spending one’s entire childhood in the guilt machine of the Christian church.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just decided to do this entirely because someone called me ‘cruel’ for arguing that you can easily live on food stamps, so I guess I’m overly sensitive to the claim that I’m being ‘insensitive’ when really I’m just trying to prove a point that seems to me relatively self-evident.

It’s all good, I understand. Like I said too, SLD, I agree with you, and oppose welfare of any variety. Not trying to play Mr. SJW, defender of the welfare state. Just saying, it’s not necessarily as easy as a lot of people think to legitimately live within those kinds of means on a long term basis. There’s no getting around it, poverty sucks.

I don’t think it’s going to be easy. I think it’s going to be work, but that it’s work that can be done.

If it were easy, I’d eat like that all the time since it would save me enormous amounts of money. The fact that I need a reason to try this means I’m aware it’s not easy, merely that it can be done, that doing it requires no supernatural ability, and that it’s wrongheaded to proclaim America is somehow letting the poor starve when they are provided with this much money monthly.

It’ll be easier than you think (unless the cost of living where you are is much higher than mine). Since I did a similar thing I still eat many of the same meals and have adopted many of the frugal habits I acquired. You’ll be amazed at how cheap, good food can be. Red beans, and rice with sausage, chicken cacciatore , pork marsala all doable on a shoestring budget.

It’ll be easier than you think (unless the cost of living where you are is much higher than mine). Since I did a similar thing I still eat many of the same meals and have adopted many of the frugal habits I acquired. You’ll be amazed at how cheap, good food can be. Red beans, and rice with sausage, chicken cacciatore , pork marsala all doable on a shoestring budget.

It’s prolly more a time commitment thing than anything else. Red beans and rice made with dry beans is cheaper and much, much tastier than the kind with canned beans, but it’s more time consuming.

Unless you are gonna sit there a watch beans soaking and simmering, hands-on time is not that much longer.And you only need to do it once, one batch should make 4-6 servings that are easily reheated and often the leftovers are tastier than the cook day portions.

It’s also helpful to remind the “4 TEH CHILDRENZ!!!” crowd that “food stamps” refers only to SNAP benefits. SNAP-WIC (Women, Infants and Children), NSLP (National School Lunch Program), SBP (School Breakfast Program), the Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, and the Special Milk Program are separate, and you can cross-qualify.

$5/day should be cake, a few years ago my dad kept going on and on about one of those diet plans on TV that cast $7/day, saying how he should do it just to save money.I told him he could eat for less than that easily, to prove it I started keeping track of my grocery bills and being a little frugal, after 10 weeks I was almost always under $30/week, and I wasn’t eating ramen noodles and tomato soup either, yeah a lot of chicken (buy’em whole.) and rice and noodles, but I was never hungry.

If you’re well-stocked with condiments, ramen makes for a pretty awesome poverty dish. A tablespoon of peanut butter with a few dashes of soy and oyster sauce makes for a decent addition to (drained) noodles. Throw some mushrooms, carrots, or onions in there?fuhgeddaboudit.

Not a bad idea. I’d suggest getting full physicals and bloodwork before and after, too. It would be interesting to see what living on rice and beans with some occasional canned chicken will do to you healthwise.

This. A couple of years ago before I got the job I have now I was barely getting by and not taking food stamps, I was like barely eating anything at all during the week and binging on buffets and Red Robin bottomless fries on payday and when I could donate plasma, and I was walking our biking everywhere. Sucked ass but by the time that was over I was in the best shape of my life.

Quick question: is this the sort of social experiment where right-wingers complain about the moral failings of the poor and then prove their biases? I’d humbly suggest you skip it and have the steak. Would you really learn anything, really?

the “failings” of the poor, at least of the generational variety, have nothing to do with money. Left-wingers choose to ignore those failings because they believe that set of poor is functionally incompetent. But since saying that out loud is bad form, the left pretends that generational poverty is someone else’s fault and more programs are what is needed to fix the problem caused by existing programs, all of which were propagated by the left. So the real question is, why does the left hate the poor?

In fact, here’s a ridiculous stat that comes from that radically right-wing source, the New York Times:

Notice how the entire line for the United States resides in the top portion of the graph? That’s because the entire country is relatively rich. In fact, America’s bottom ventile is still richer than most of the world: That is, the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American income distribution is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants.

It’s one of the things I hate most about my liaison work for a public entity where I interact with social worker types all the time. They’re always carrying on about needing more funding or the “dam will burst” for their specific program. They see themselves as benevolent workers, slaving away for the public benefit and use the number of government dependents they serve as justification for program expansion. What they never, never admit is that they are earning comparatively fantastic salaries and benefits that they would otherwise not be getting if their program went away.

Selfish bastards who claim selflessness and see themselves as martyrs.

So as many of you know, starting on June 1 I’m going to eat for less than $5.00 a day as a social experiment to prove that anyone who thinks you can’t eat for the amount of money you get on food stamps is an idiot.

Typical of you one percenters with your fancy and safe cooking stoves and kitchens and fancy knives and cooking utensils, thinking that the poor have all the luxuries that your privilege has bought you!

I’m not spending $5.00 a day, I’m spending at the same rate provided to you by food stamps. Which means it’s really $133 a month, which is less than $5.00 a day. It’s more like $4.40 a day once you average it off across the year.

I’m buying ahead of time and cooking. I’m also completely cutting any soda or junk food from my diet and am going to stop drinking coffee.

Alcohol gets a bad rap as a destructive indulgence, but it’s also incredibly palliative. Poor folk are written off as drunken slobs for imbibing regularly, but I’m coming around to the notion that drinking moderately might be a necessity for most people. Life is stressful, but our brains do a lot to engender and aggravate stress. Helping mitigate the oppressive sense of impending ruin for a few hours is worth something.

Are we talking $5 per day or $35 per week? Because if it’s the latter (and assuming you’re starting from scratch, so to speak), you can get yourself a bag of flour, yeast, and salt, and you’re off to the races. Eggs are cheap as fuck and a great source of protein, then you go for stuff like oatmeal, lentils, potatoes of course, and milk. Ends-and-pieces gets you some good meats and cheeses under $5. I don’t know if this is cheating or not, but depending on where you are you can score some tomato plants for cheap and, with care, you’ll be knee-deep in the things by July. Same with potatoes, actually. And if you can hunt and/or fish, well shit, there you go.

Question: How can a socialist be critical of soldiers and cops when socialism necessitates throwing people in prison for failing to obey the dictates of the socialist state? That means that a socialist economic system needs a very active police force in order to imprison people who don’t give what the government has deemed to be their ‘fair share.’

Yes, but *American* soldiers and cops enforce capitalism, which is oppressive. In the socialist utopia, these noble servants of the people will promote social justice, and of course people who are truly committed to social justice will be affected, only kulaks and wreckers.

You missed the part where american socialist constantly offers up apologia for murderous socialist regimes. See, in american socialist’s mind, ‘socialist states’ engaging in that behaviour is completely fine or is something to be ignored, while ‘corporatist states’ engaging in it is something he can use to criticize something he already dislikes. This is a guy who offers up a shitty whataboutism related to America every time someone points out the Soviet Union’s brutally repressive nature.

“As the court is aware, this case involves five different counts aimed at girls between the ages of 11 and 15,” Pabst said. “It involves him loitering around bus stops and middle schools targeting these young victims. Additionally, Mr. Francisco is currently on probation for twice masturbating outside a woman’s home while looking in on her.”

Maybe I’m jaded, but I thought this movie was bad. Politics aside, the story on which this is based is probably based more on fabrication than truth, the plot and dialogue were simplistic and trite, the science of sniping was reduced to someone shooting targets at 100 yards, I could go on… I’m surprised Loder excepts the 160 kill count and mile-shot without any doubts or mentions of all the other Kyle fabrications and exaggerations.

Your examples are fiction. None of those movies claim to be based in truth. I’m not talking about normal hollywood embellishments, either. I’m saying Kyle fabricated a lot of his claims, and therefore the movie is also based on a lie. The lies negate all the other themes in the movie.

Your examples are fiction. None of those movies claim to be based in truth. I’m not talking about normal hollywood embellishments, either. I’m saying Kyle fabricated a lot of his claims, and therefore the movie is also based on a lie. The lies negate all the other themes in the movie.

I really don’t understand your objection; you haven’t made a cogent argument yet. Gone With the Wind isn’t comparable to a supposed work of non-fiction. If someone made a movie about the 2 cups of tea guy, people would call bs, because everyone now knows that his story was fabricated. It’s ridiculous to debate whether or not this movie is pro-war, or if it depicts Kyle as human, etc., when the whole thing is lie. It also happens to be a bad piece of fiction, as well.

That’s not all he lied about, buddy. But by all means, continue to embarrass yourself defending the guy. He also claimed that every kill, without any doubt, was a terrorist. A popular tactic at the time was baiting, in which a piece of military equipment was left in an intersection, anyone who touched the piece of equipment would be shot. This was a loophole in the ROE that the SEALS loved to exploit in order to get their rocks off and inflate their numbers. Think of it as the counter-terrorism version of a bait car that is left with all of its doors open and the keys in the ignition. When a 15 y/o kid gets in and the cops nab him, they claim to have taken down a car thief, which is technically correct, but we all know is ineffective at getting actual car thieves.

You are ignorant, as are most. Within special operations, SEALS are not highly regarded. They are well known for their, let’s say, less than careful target identification. If you also think that commanders and individual troops do not gain prestige from the amount of kills they can claim, then you are mistaken. My own NCOER’s would contain bullet points about how many enemy were killed/captured on mission that I participated in. Again, it’s not even the number that I care much about, it’s the claim that that number also represents actual terrorists, when in fact, whatever the actual number is, it contains a non-zero number of civilians.

Ok man. Continue to hold onto the belief that somehow, a guy who claims to have punched Jesse Ventura out, shot americans from the top of the super dome, and killed two carjackers stateside, is telling the truth about everything else. I’m sure all those kills were “good shoots”. I’m sure he shot a guy with one attempt at over a mile, I’m sure he didn’t use bait tactics, as every other sniper was at the time….really, what are you standing up for here?

please Francisco. We know there’s hardly any difference between veterans bragging about drunken bullshit, and the systematic cold blooded murder of civilians. One is obviously is proof of the other.

This was well known to everyone… except the DoD who vetted his book prior to publication…. and the writers/producers/directors who put millions of dollars into producing the film… and the military lawyers who scrutinized all the confirmed kills he had for strictly following the ROE….

That article wasn’t my source, but others in here insist that I do their Google for them. I have first hand experience, which I’m sure you will doubt, since it doesn’t at all fit with your emotionally generated beliefs. The hero worship is fucking thick.

I never claimed that my kills were listed. Total ekia and captured on operations I participated in were, however. Others in her claimed that baiting wasn’t a tactic in use at the time, I have already proven their assertion to be false. Kyle is the proven liar in this debate, but you can keep attacking my bona fides if that let’s you maintain your childish view of sniper heroes, or whatever your fantasy is.

I’m saying Kyle fabricated a lot of his claims, and therefore the movie is also based on a lie.

The Jesse Ventura incident and the truck robbery is, I think, an exhaustive list of exaggerations, and neither made it into the movie. Or: you can still make factually accurate movies about possibly dishonest people.

Shakespeare’s Henry V certainly is based more on fabrication than truth, but does that somehow undermine the nature of the story being told? Not really, because it’s not attempting to present itself as documentary piece. Is American Sniper attempting to portray itself as a documentary piece as well?

The book title: American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History

The film is based on the book. If the lies/inaccuracies are in the book then they probably weren’t undone in the film (though they could have been omitted). I’m not sure I’d call the film a pure documentary but I also wouldn’t give mistakes a free pass. If he used a Remington Model 700 in .308 with a 6X ACOG on it for a particular shot in real life then the film should have had that same setup in Bradley Cooper’s hands.

The discussion was whether it should be considered historically accurate.

Some have suggested the plastic baby should have been replaced with an invisible baby seated in a visible high chair with Eastwood doing a reverse fourth wall breaking by entering the film and having a conversation with it. Dunno if that would have been worse than the plastic baby.

It is ok to lie if it makes a better film to grostulate to. /chris kyle sycophant

I didn’t find proof online, but I thought Eastwood — when he ran for mayor of Carmel-By-The-Sea — claimed he was a libertarian. If I read that, it was probably in the dead-tree version of Reason, back in the 80s. Paper magazines, kids! You can look it up!

You are correct, Eastwood describes himself as a Libertarian (and it was in Reason a long time ago, as I read it, but don’t remember when). Nevertheless, it is online such as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P…..t_Eastwood

Her verbal pirouette is something to be admired. Not so much because she recovered?she didn’t?but because she didn’t miss a beat or acknowledge the faux pas. She’d give the WH press secretary a run for his money.

I wonder if Eastwood actually asked Michael Moore to publicly criticize the film thus making it every right thinking, God fearing, military genuflecting, American conservatives’ moral duty to see the film? At the least he should get some of the profits…

You may not be interested in government and “government f**kups”, but government is very interested in you. Even Obama suggested that government should force you to vote or fine/jail you if you don’t. He’s that interested.

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This is worst review I’ve ever read by Kurt. Although “American Sniper’ is gritty in appearance in ways that cheap propaganda films like “Rambo” are not, it’s a propaganda film nonetheless. I have a takedown on my own blog, and others have appeared at Slate and the American Conservative. Sorry, Kurt, you phoned this one in.

How fucking pathetic do you have to be that you come to a place where you haven’t voiced a single opinion that was either A) coherent or B) shared by anyone else here to shill for your shitty blogspot blog.

I’m glad to see this article getting some press. After the movie came out, all the political brouhaha was off base IMHO. The liberals all attacked Kyle as a “coward” or “monster” while others claimed that Eastwood made him out to be a hero. It was like the Democrats/Socialists vs. NeoConservatives, with no other opinions allowed.

I agree with Loder, Eastwood (who describes himself as a libertarian) made a compelling movie about a sniper, in a war that wasn’t what Kyle expected it to be, and about a war that Eastwood didn’t see as one in our interests. But Eastwood wisely (perhaps quite intelligently) didn’t dwell on the politics, and instead focused on Kyle and the effects the war had on him.

Because I love this Country and I support our troops, that article really shook me and those frankly words opened a new door about the perception about the Bushes wars. Honestly, that’s the reason I sent my contribution to Reason. To be honest this very positive review with the final link to Amazon is – for me – a little surprising.

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Some on the left are definitely repulsed at this movie, viewing it as a priest profascist work, and spend a lot of time pillorying all those horrible Merkuns in flyover country and their rah rah response

It’s NOT a pro war movie, it’s s character study, and those that admit that LOATHE the character of Kyle

I am talking stuff you can read at commondreams or Chomsky’s take, or even the guardian and a lot of British stuff

It’s really refreshing to see them get all Scornful towards us horrible Americans and our ‘fascist’ tendencies etc and EVERY one misinterprets Kyle’s line about killing ‘savages’ saying he is referring to all Iraqis, and not the kind of scum that take a power drill to somebody’s head

It’s beautiful that it outs these ninnies, much like I enjoy seeing anticop bigots here start devolving into a frothing factsbedamned mess whenever the latest alleged outrage (hands up don’t shoot lies etc) are brought up

Eastwood is not simple minded and he is not gung ho on war, but presenting Kyle in any manner other than an awful ‘fascist’ murderer is guaranteed to bring the anti american, elitist (Ioved the article that referenced Americans who would rather drink beer and watch football than read a book!) ninnies out in droves and it certainly didn’t fail

Kyle is a hero, but a flawed one, as they invariably are, and war sucks and Eastwood knows it

Yea, sure … Bait cars add ineffective at catching auto thieves because everybody knows that somehow magically, people who are not auto thieves choose to steal bait cars. There is no apparent difference to a potential auto thief as to a bait car, or a very typical auto theft where Sally soccer mom leaves keys I. Ignition when she warms up car or when she runs into Starbucks

One if the easiest metrics to ferret out a crime loving libertine idiot from an actual libertarian is opposition to bait car stings

Bait cars catch auto thieves and only auto thieves

If you decide to take a car because somebody left he keys in the ignition – you are an auto thief

Period

I love stuff like this because it outs people as completely unserious and in fact frivolous thinkers and as the type who is simply anti-state for the sake of it, no matter how positive the state action. And bait csr stings are an EXTREMELY beneficial and positive state action